TRANS-WITTE-Al-Memories-20080404-FINAL

Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History Special Collections Department University of Arkansas Libraries 365 N. McIlroy Ave. Fayetteville, AR 72701 (479) 575-5330 This oral history interview is based on the memories and opinions of the subject being interviewed. As such, it is subject to the innate fallibility of memory and is susceptible to inaccuracy. All researchers using this interview should be aware of this reality and are encouraged to seek corroborating documentation when using any oral history interview. Arkansas Memories Project Interview with: Al Witte 4 April 2008 Fayetteville, Arkansas Interviewers: Peggy Williams and Scott Lunsford [00:00:00.00] Scott Lunsford: Okay. Today’s date is, what? April . Joy Endicott: April fourth. SL: April fourth, 2008. Our first interviewer today is Peggy [“P.J.”] . JE: Williams SL: . Williams, and we’re returning back to Al Witte at the Al Witte residence here in Fayetteville, Arkansas. This recording is for the David and Barbara Pryor Cen- ter for Arkansas Oral and Visual History. It will reside in the Special Collections Department at the Mullins Library. Copies of the—of these interviews will actu- ally also reside at the University of Arkansas Law School. And, Al, I have to ask you at this point in time if it’s all right with you that we’re back here today and that we’re videotaping this interview. [00:00:54.08] Al Witte: It’s—yes, I’m—I’m very happy to see you again. Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries 1 Arkansas Memories Project, Al Witte interview, 04 April 2008 http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/ SL: All right. [Laughs] Well, thank you very much. So, Peggy, I’m gonna let you get this thing going and . Peggy Williams: Wonderful. SL: . I’ll try not to interrupt. [Laughter] PW: Please do—any time. SL: And you all have fun. [00:01:07.11] PW: Well, Al, last time we talked I believe we—we had ended the con- versation in about 1956, and . AW: [19]57. PW: [19]57. AW: Yes, it was, as much as I remember, early September, and a—a memorable time because I left the day after Governor [Orval] Faubus called out the National Guard to interfere with the entrance of nine black students to Central High School in Little Rock, an event which still resonates from time to time, both in Arkansas and—and in other places. JE: Phones? SL: My phone? JE: Probably. Thank you. Sorry. [00:01:49.11] AW: And so I arrived here, as I remember, on a Saturday in early Sep- tember 1957. I think I might start with my first two days here because they live in memory still quite vividly. I—I brought with me a used portable typewriter—cost me $12, but it didn’t work. So I thought—I wondered—it was about 1:00 on Sat- urday. I hadn’t had lunch, and I thought, “I wonder if there’s a typewriter repair Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries 2 Arkansas Memories Project, Al Witte interview, 04 April 2008 http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/ place in—in Fayetteville,” and after checking into the small apartment I had—that had—the dean had arranged for me to live in, about 1:00 in the afternoon I went out carrying my portable typewriter looking for a place to get it repaired and— and have lunch. And the first part was easy. I went down Block Street towards the [Fayetteville] Square, and there was a store that said, “typewriter repair.” And so I parked the car right in front and got out—went over, and the door was open, but there was no one in sight. But I heard some voices in a back room and so I yelled, “Is anybody here?” And the voice said, “Come on back.” And so I went back, and three men sitting there. Turned out two of ’em [them] were the owners of the typewriter store and the third was a salesman from Oklahoma City. And they were drinking some bourbon whiskey—I think it was Jim Beam—and they were mixing it with Coca-Cola, which offended me aesthetically. But, on the other hand, if that’s all you’ve got, that’s all you’ve got. And the first words were, “Would you like a drink?” Well, I wanted to get the typewriter repaired at the lowest possible price, so I didn’t want to offend them. And I said, “Okay,” and he—he did—we did arrange for me to have the typewriter fixed. But the next thing I knew it was about 6:00 at night and they—they said, “It’s your turn to go get the Coca-Colas.” And they had meanwhile brought out another quart of bourbon. So that was my last conscious memory until the next morning, when I woke up in my car, still out in front of the typewriter place. And I was a little hung over. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining. The—there were birds and then there were church bells that were ringing, and that’s what woke me up— or perhaps it was the policeman who was kind of tapping on the door and looking Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries 3 Arkansas Memories Project, Al Witte interview, 04 April 2008 http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/ at me and saying, “Are you all right?” And I said, “Yes. Yes, sir, I am. I’m—I was just taking a little nap before I went to church.” And he said, “Okay,” and let me off, so to speak. Eventually, I got back to where I was staying, and that night I got a call from the dean saying would I like to have dinner with him and his wife, Dr. [Robert] Leflar and his wife, and the dean of the college of arts and sciences. I was very hung over, and . PW: [Laughs] [00:05:35.26] AW: . the night—the dinner is still a little mysterious to me, but I found myself in the middle—I went from the typewriter venue to the—the biggest players in the Fayetteville academic establishment. Dean Guerdon Nichols, leg- endary dean of the college of arts and sciences, Dr. Leflar, their wives, and a woman known as Mrs. Laird Archer, whose husband had been a big-shot of sorts with the United Nations and the UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scien- tific and Cultural Organization] Program in Europe—especially Greece. But in her prior existence she’d been known as Mrs. Julian Waterman, the widow of our first dean. And so there I was with these people—totally unable to function. PW: [Laughs] [00:06:34.06] AW: Listening to them discuss Orval Faubus, what—what President [Dwight David] Eisenhower’s reaction to Faubus’s conduct had to be, the uphold- ing of federal power—anyway, it was an interesting thirty-six hours’ [laughter] introduction to Fayetteville. PW: [Laughs] That’s quite an intro into the city. Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries 4 Arkansas Memories Project, Al Witte interview, 04 April 2008 http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/ AW: Yeah, so I—I remembered that all. I became a good friend of one of the typewriter people, Ed Davis, who had tried to make it as a—as a baseball—professional baseball player—a pitcher, but had never gotten very high up in the minor leagues. But we used to talk about that and we played golf together in later years. Fine man. I remember him with nothing but pleasure. But that has nothing really much to do with why I came here, and that was to start teaching school. And the law school in those days was as so dramatically different. The world’s so—has changed so much that if you are from a younger generation you have a hard time visualizing what life was like. [00:07:50.17] PW: What was your first memory of the law . .? AW: Well, my first—my first impression was—first of all, the building was quite nice for the circumstances. [AW clears his throat] Excuse me. But what happened was that the law school had always been kind of an abandoned child on the cam- pus. They’d—they had operated out of the basement of Old Main for years as a— that was the law school. PW: Wow. [00:08:18.16] AW: They had operated out of an old building, now torn down, that later became the journalism building, and so on, called Hill Hall. They had never had a home of their own until Dr. Leflar went to the [Arkansas] Legislature and struck a bargain, and that was if he’d raise a certain amount of money on his own from lawyers and so on, the Legislature would sort of batch it and they would use that money to build Waterman Hall. And so finally—so he—he—he spent a lot of time just going—every city, town and village in—in Arkansas begging for mon- Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, Special Collections, University of Arkansas Libraries 5 Arkansas Memories Project, Al Witte interview, 04 April 2008 http://pryorcenter.uark.edu/ ey—finally got enough to satisfy the Legislature, and they—they started to build the—the—the first law school.

Load more